A Semi-Daily Advocate of the Modern School, Industrial Unionism, and
Individual Liberty.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

What Kind of People Are Willing to Play a Rigged Game?

I've refrained from saying much about the Atlanta cheating scandal for two main reasons. One, Atlanta's role -- or what Atlanta signifies -- is highly ambiguous to me. Does it implicate the "reformers" (within the district) the "status quo" players or both? I have no idea. Two, I have no sympathy for people who went along with this on the micro level, but on the macro level, I say, "Of course, what did anyone expect?"

But consider this: teaching in a high poverty urban school is a rigged game, and it ain't rigged in your favor. No business would ever use something like AYP to measure their own performance (e.g., we'll declare the year a failure in the annual report if we miss our projections in a single division by one point, no matter what kind of year we have in the business as a whole). So over time, you're going to lose people who are simply unwilling to put up with it, and gain whatever kind of people are willing to play a game rigged against them. What kind of people do you think willingly embrace that?